“But … how did they get in the front door?” Jake asked. “Was there any sign of forced entry?” Violet’s front door was entirely visible from the street, and he knew the fire had been set soon after dark. Would the kidnapper have risked someone seeing him while he spent time working on the lock?
Forrester turned his serious, grey-eyed gaze on him. “The firemen did a lot of damage to the front door. Without checking to see if it was open, they slammed an axe into it. We’re sending an expert to examine what remains.”
Jake sighed and rubbed his face. His hand came away black. “So you have a nice theory. Do you have any evidence?”
“We did find one piece of evidence at the scene so far, outside the laundry room where the fire was started.” He took a clear plastic evidence bag out of his briefcase and laid it on the table.
Jake leaned in close. Inside the bag was a good-sized cigarette butt, bent but not crushed.
“It’s a Marlboro Menthol Lite,” the FBI agent told them. “Do you know anyone who smokes them?”
Violet shrugged. “I don’t know anyone who smokes.”
Jake, however, had recently seen someone remove a cigarette from the distinctive green and white pack. The knowledge changed everything, and it changed nothing. At least, he told himself, he’d be able to reassure Violet that she had no culpability in the baby’s kidnapping. The blame was all his now.
“Uncle Matt, where’s Carrie?”
The big man shook his head. He knew what Jake was implying. “She would never do such a thing. Besides, she quit smoking.”
Everyone spoke at once after that, but Violet’s voice was the only one Jake heard. “What does Carrie have to do with this? How does Matt know her?”
Ted Forrester raised his hand for silence. “Mr. Macintyre, please start at the beginning.”
Violet remained silent while Jake explained how Carrie had gone from being Daisy’s nanny to Matt’s aide. The first time he dared to look in her direction, she was staring at him in horror, like he was a rat she’d just discovered in Daisy’s crib. He couldn’t blame her — he’d just remembered Carrie telling him her boyfriend wanted her “to do things for money.” The second time he glanced at her, after he told them about Carrie babysitting for Daisy at the townhouse, she had covered her face with her hands.
“Mr. Macintyre — Matt — where do you believe this woman to be at the moment?” the agent asked his uncle when Jake finally stopped talking.
“I
believe
she’s at the movies with her sister, which is where she told me she was going when she dropped me off here after my doctor’s appointment. She’s coming back at eleven and we’re driving home to Wickham tonight.” He gripped the arms of his chair as he spoke, and Jake knew he would be up and pacing around if it didn’t require the use of the crutches he’d just gotten that day.
Forrester flipped open his notebook and began to fire questions at him. “What’s her sister’s name? Where does she live?”
“I don’t know! Listen, is there lipstick on that cigarette butt? Carrie was wearing lipstick today, real bright stuff.”
The man shook his head. “There’s no visible stain, although the lab analysis will tell us more.”
Violet
did
jump up. “Her lipstick could have worn off. It’s obvious this woman took Daisy, she’s probably been planning it ever since I fired her. Any idiot would have known she should be kept away from Daisy!”
She looked around as though she were wondering why she was standing up or where she might go, then took the few steps to Matt’s chair and dropped to her knees in front of him. “Please Matt, I know you don’t want to believe she did this. But tell us anything you know that might help find Daisy.”
Sighing, he reached forward and touched her face. “There is something I know, and it looks bad for Carrie, I have to admit.”
“What is it, sir?” The agent held his pen poised above his notebook.
“About a week ago, I heard her yelling at someone in the kitchen. I thought it was the stupid dog. By the time I got in there in that danged wheelchair I saw she’d been talking on the phone — her hand was still on it. I wanted to ask her about it, but she shook her head. Instead she asked me if I would get my phone number changed. I did it the next morning. Didn’t ask any questions, cause I just figured that loser boyfriend of hers had gotten my number somehow.”
Jake — the “idiot” who’d brought this fiend into Violet’s home — held his splitting head in his hands. The locks at Violet’s had been changed after Carrie was fired, but she’d spent several hours alone there since then. There were spare keys hanging on a hook in the kitchen, and it would have been easy for her to snag one or have one made. She could have even put Daisy in her stroller and walked to the hardware store.
“But, don’t you see?” Matt continued. “She hung up on the guy, and we had the number changed.
He
may have done it, but I know she didn’t help him.”
Jake’s cell phone rang, breaking the moment of silence that followed Matt’s heated proclamation. Ted caught his eye and nodded; he slid a pad of paper and a pencil toward him.
“Macintyre here.”
“We have the baby, and we want $500,000 for her safe return.”
Jake was reasonably certain the muffled voice was a man’s, but that didn’t mean Carrie wasn’t his accomplice. He thought about confronting him, asking if he was Joe, but decided it would be safer to stick to the guidelines the FBI agent had given him.
“How do we know she’s okay?”
Violet gasped, then covered her mouth. He was momentarily distracted by the panic in her eyes — the same panic he was feeling in his gut.
The man laughed, a sound that made the hairs on the back of Jake’s neck stand up. “Well, I could make her cry, but you don’t want that, do you? She’s sleeping with her pink teddy bear, safe and sound.”
“The money. When and where?” Jake picked up the pencil.
“Leave it at midnight in Copp’s Hill Cemetery, and come alone. No cops, or you’ll never see your little flower again.”
Jake wrote down the amount, but laughed when he realized the foolishness of the kidnappers instructions. “Midnight? I don’t know what world you’re living in, you scumbag, but in mine the banks aren’t open.”
The muffled voice swore, then became totally inaudible as he spoke to someone away from the phone. “Ten o’clock tomorrow morning,” he said to Jake a moment later. “Get the money in hundred dollar bills, put it in a backpack and leave it next to Cotton Mather’s tombstone. Walk away. An hour later you’ll get a call telling you where to pick up your kid.”
“Ten
A.M.
,” Jake repeated for the benefit of the others in the room. “If you hurt her, I’ll …” The line had gone dead. He threw the phone on the table so hard it skidded all the way across.
Jamie caught it and set it down gently, then put his arm around Violet, who was sobbing soundlessly. “The guy is so stupid he didn’t know you can’t get cash tonight?”
“First of all, was it a man’s voice?” Ted asked Jake.
“Yes. It sounded like he had something over his mouth or the phone, maybe a piece of cloth.”
The agent tapped his pencil against his notebook. “He called your phone, not Miss Gallagher’s. Any idea why?”
Jake had to swallow hard to get the answer past the lump in his throat. “Carrie knew my cell phone number.” He raised his eyes to Violet. “I’m so sorry.”
• • •
Violet ignored Jake. His pathetic apology would do nothing to bring back her baby.
Her
baby. What he’d done filled her with a fury so intense it was frightening, but she was angry at herself as well. Her instincts had told her to keep Jake out of her life — and Daisy’s — but the first moment she’d found him useful, she’d let him in. Inch by inch, she’d let him, until he’d taken over. He thought he knew what was best for Daisy — he thought he knew best about
everything
— and he’d acted without consulting her. Even with proof Carrie had neglected Daisy, and worse, he’d brought her back into her life. It was, in a word, unforgivable. If —
when
— she got Daisy back, she would do everything in her power to make sure Jake would be out of her life forever.
She shot him a look she hoped was so scathing contact with her would become his new biggest phobia. To avoid it, he’d willingly walk through any fire.
“I’ll get the money,” she told the FBI agent. “I phoned my parents on my way over here, and they chartered a plane to fly up from Connecticut. I don’t have that much cash available, but my stepfather will provide the rest.”
“Violet, I want to help …”
She ignored Jake. “Just so we’re clear, Agent Forrester, Mr. Macintyre has no legal rights here.”
Jake opened his mouth to speak, then apparently changed his mind. His face crumpled, but she had no sympathy for him.
The second agent showed Ted something on the computer screen, then he spoke to Violet. “There’s a chance we’ll have your baby back before you have to pay the ransom. We already know the call was made from a walk-up pay phone in the North End, in the same area as Copp’s Hill Cemetery. Now I need you to tell me everything you know about the former nanny.”
“Carrie didn’t do this,” Matt said, hoisting himself up and hobbling out of the room on his crutches. “You’ll see.”
Violet ignored him. “Her name is Carrie Benedict. I hired her through The Cabot Agency, I’m sure they have much more information than I have. Elizabeth Cabot is the owner.”
“We’ll track down her last known address in Boston and send someone to speak to anyone they find there.” He raised a finger to let Violet know he was listening to someone on his earpiece.
At the same time, they heard the ding of the elevator arriving in the foyer. Violet looked at her watch. It was eleven-fifteen. If everything had gone smoothly, her mother and David could have made it to Boston by now.
“That must be my mother.” She jumped up to greet her; she’d never needed her more than she did at that moment.
Tears were sliding down her face and she was ready to throw herself into her mother’s arms when the elevator door slid open. But there were only two people inside, and neither of them was her mother. The same uniformed policeman who had escorted her and Jake when they arrived had a firm grip on the second person, whose hands were cuffed behind her back. Carrie.
• • •
“He didn’t ask me to kidnap Daisy, and I had no idea he was going to do it.” Carrie, pale and trembling in spite of Matt’s big arm around her, had just told the investigators that Joe’s brother, a small-time hood with a police record, lived in the North End. They were sending officers to the address she gave them even as she told her story.
“He said he’d seen Miss Gallagher and her baby in the ads, and that she had a lot of money. That I’d blown it for him by getting fired, but he had a plan for how I could make it up to him.”
“What did you say?” Forrester asked her.
“I hung up. I told him I wasn’t afraid of him anymore, and he’d better stay away from me.”
“But how did he know to call you at Matt’s?” Violet asked her.
Carrie turned her tear-stained face in her direction for the first time, and Violet saw how much the former nanny had changed. It wasn’t just the make-up and the flattering hairstyle, either. Despite the woman’s current anxiety, she seemed more self-possessed, and her gaze met and held Violet’s across the coffee table.
“He said his sister-in-law — her name is Angel — saw the interview you did with Jake. She told him Jake was born and raised in Wickham, and Joe had a hunch and started calling every Macintyre in Wickham. When he got to Matt’s number, of course I answered.”
“Got to get Caller ID,” Matt muttered to himself.
“Miss Gallagher, I would never have hurt you or your baby, but I’m so sorry now I didn’t tell anyone what Joe said about you. He’s a real bad guy, I know that, but I never imagined …”
“It’s hard to believe this of anyone, but it happens,” Jake said from behind Violet. “He’s not just bad, he’s stupid and cruel. That’s the worst combination there is.” She’d sensed him standing behind her, listening to Carrie’s explanation, and she knew he was talking about his own stepfather as well as Joe.
“Angel — well, she’s a mom. A good one. I know she’ll keep Daisy safe.”
Violet thought about the pink teddy bear and Daisy’s blanket, and wanted desperately to believe Carrie was right. Although she was more optimistic than she’d been earlier, Daisy wasn’t back in her arms yet. There was no relief for her just because the woman had shown up when she said she would, even if it did mean she probably had no part in the kidnapping.
Jake’s instincts about the former nanny might have been accurate, but he shouldn’t have gone behind her back or withheld the crucial information that a woman she’d fired had been left to care for her baby, alone. How could she ever trust him again?
When the elevator dinged again, she rushed to the foyer. This time it was her parents, but her heart fell because it wasn’t a policewoman holding her baby. “Violet, it’s too soon,” Jake whispered to her, even though he’d rushed to meet the elevator for the same reason she had. “We’ll hear something in a few minutes.”
Then her mother’s arms were around her and she was enveloped in the subtle scent of Sandra’s signature perfume. David Gallagher was introducing himself to the FBI agent and everyone else in the room, and demanding an update. “Where is my granddaughter? What’s being done to find her?”
“Everyone be quiet!” Forrester raised his hand to the room like a cop directing traffic. Then he did something amazing — he smiled. “They have the baby, and she’s fine. She’ll be here in fifteen minutes.”
It was the longest fifteen minutes of Violet’s life. In fact, it was seventeen, but then the elevator arrived and a beaming policewoman handed Daisy to her mother. The baby smiled and nuzzled against Violet, but as soon as everyone else crowded around them, talking in loud, excited voices, she began to wail.
“We need to give Violet and Daisy some space,” her mother said. Everyone went back to the living room, while Violet stayed in the foyer, talking to Daisy and soothing her. At the same time she examined her from head to toe. She appeared to be unharmed, as Forrester had said.